The Tortoise and the Hare
The Tortoise and the Hare 'is the number third Living Books PC Rom Game with Ruff's Bone. It is a more unique adaptation in the Living Books series, this time being based on the famous fable by Aesop. It is based on the 1993 book that was retold by Mark Schlitchting, and the CD Rom was released in 1993. Plot The story starts off with the male narrator, a purple bird named Simon, explaining how the Tortoise was a slow but steady person, while the Hare was busy and was "always on the move." One day, when they meet up each other twice, the Hare complains that the Tortoise never does anything, and that he could do "a hundred things in the time it takes him to go one block." Fed up with this, the Hare has challenged the Tortoise to a race. The Hare ends up so far in the lead during the race that he starts wasting time elsewhere, choosing to eat after getting very hungry and sleeping after getting worn out. While he is sleeping, the tortoise walked by very quietly. Just as the Hare wakes up, he sees the Tortoise approaching the finish line, and sprints for his life to try to catch the Tortoise. He's too late to the red finish line, however, and loses the race he thought he was destined to win. The story ended on the moral "slow but steady wins the race." Pages *1 *2 *3 *4 *5 *6 *7 *8 *9 *10 *11 *12 Characters *Simon *The Tortoise *The Hare *The dragonfly (running gag) Trivia * It is confirmed in the free paperback storybook (which was packaged within the CD-ROM) that Mark Schlichting, the founder of Living Books, retold this Aesop's fable rather than adapting an existing book that previously retold the fable. ** Though Schlichting's retelling of the story was not originally published outside of/before Living Books, it does not count as one of Living Books' three storybooks (the other two being Ruff's Bone and Harry and the Haunted House) not based on an existing book. * Simon would later go on to host the Living Books samplers, which were sometimes standalone and sometimes included within the games, where you'd be able to try out the first page of each product released up to that point. *This is the first game in the series to start the trend of removing the running gags after clicking them once. *There was a preview for this game in the very first version/demo of Arthur's Teacher Trouble. *Strangely enough, the preview said on the top left corner: Aesop's Fables: Book 1 meaning that it was planned that there would be more of Aesop's fables as Living Books. Apparently, The Tortoise and the Hare was the only one that was made of the fables. * On page 4, the word "hardly" was heard in high quality. ** However, the entire line "The Tortoise could hardly believe that he was going to race." was heard in low quality. * The credits animation with the receptionist juggling six shapes when he's on the phone in his office was first used in this game, but after this credits animation finished playing, the wizard animation (from Just Grandma and Me) appeared again. The credits animation with the people waving with balloons and flags has not yet been seen until Stellaluna came out on Living Books. * You leave the book when the Tortoise says, "OK, goodbye.". * This time the ''Ruff's Bone preview was in both versions, but it was slightly altered for v1.1. Towards the end, a line was changed from "Then get Broderbund's Living Book called Ruff's Bone!" to "Then get Living Books called Ruff's Bone!" due to the series turning into a joint venture with Random House. * The two unused previews were left in the game yet again, and this time, they're present on both versions of the game. Alongside the Ruff's Bone preview, there are also previews for Arthur's Birthday and Harry and the Haunted House. The only way these can be accessed is by editing the outline file. They're saved as '''PREV02.MAC and PREV03.MAC on the Macintosh version, and PREV02.IBM, and PREV03.IBM on the PC CD-Rom version. * Like the previous two games, this one originally had a slow fading engine in v1.0. ** V1.1 gave the game an electric engine upgrade; the fading is faster on the Windows version, there is a loading cursor into the form of a running man. ** This is also the first game to wait for sounds to finish before continuing animation. In the previous two games, sounds would get cutoff if they ran longer than the animation. * The v1.0 demo was oddly missing the title screen. The v1.1 demo fixed this. Re-releases * 1993: Original release. This one is scarce to find. * 1994: Random House release. Medium-difficulty to find. * 2002: PC Treasures re-release. This is the easiest version to find. Uses V1.1. This Living Books article is a stub. You can help the Living Books Wiki by expanding it. Category:Living Books Games Category:Harry and Friends Category:Books